A Sleepless Winter

 📅 Winter 2017; after the events of The Waterfront & We’ve Built Bridges Just For Burning

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴs ᴏғ ᴇᴍᴏᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ, sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ, ᴇᴀᴛɪɴɢ ᴅɪsᴏʀᴅᴇʀs, sᴜʙsᴛᴀɴᴄᴇ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ〛

Athena needed to get out. She knew she did, even if the guilt over feeling it was enough to drown her. But the truth was that she was running on empty; on less than empty. November had come in as a bombing fleet of a month and Athena felt leveled. She was meant to be ‘the functional one,’ but it had gotten so, so hard. 
She wasn’t sleeping anymore. Seth had been silently downward-spiraling for a while; had broken a couple mirrors before and needed her or Aetos to go up and be with him, and she’d started to fret that he might be cutting again...but she’d heard nothing from the apartment overhead a week and a half ago, the night prior to the morning he’d come downstairs with his neck wrapped in gauze, and he couldn’t give her straight answers about anything. 
Why had he done it? Why hadn’t he reached out? Why wasn’t he committing himself to a unit? 
He didn’t know; he’d been drunk, when he came to his senses he’d regretted it: He wouldn’t do it again.

She couldn’t bear it, couldn’t trust him, and couldn’t rest in the apartment below his; not anymore, not if she might miss something by succumbing to sleep. 
But in truth she didn’t want to be there to miss the signs anyway, and didn’t want to be there to hear them, either. She tried desperately to avoid being at home and threw herself into frequent late nights clubbing, though no matter where she was, she’d often end up barricading herself in a bathroom and crying from the stress anyway.

It wasn’t just Seth causing it, either: In October’s aftermath, Kohao was careening towards God-knows-what-end; more volatile than ever, frequently coked-out, and prone to the pendulum swings between love and hate that she’d come to expect from him. He’d been on the hate side that evening and screaming at her for either loving him or not loving him, she couldn’t quite tell which, and she’d gotten sucked into yelling back even though she knew she should just hunker down and let him come around:

“I never fucking asked to be saved, Athena!” Kohao ended up yelling, after she foolishly threw down 2011 as an example of her love for him; “You and Seth just decided you had something to prove, no one would have known if you’d just kept your mouth shut, you could have just let me—”
“KILL PEOPLE?” Athena interrupted, “We could have just let you KILL PEOPLE?”
“I’d be dead too and they would have fucking deserved it anyway!”
“God, that’s sick, K, you KNOW that’s sick—”
“YEAH,” Kohao spat venomously, “I’m fucking SICK! And now I have to stay sick for the rest of my goddamn life because you two couldn’t just let me off myself! Then or in October; nobody will let me fucking die! You know what you do with a rabid dog, Athena? You fucking shoot it, you don’t force it to suffer! And now everyone else has to deal with me too! I hope you feel fucking great about that!”

He’d slammed his bedroom door behind him and she’d stormed out of the apartment, holding onto her anger as long as she could because it was the only thing keeping the lid on her grief and fear. What she wanted to do was call Astra, or Gabe; she was dying to be able to crash on Astra’s couch and have her feelings validated, to rant to Gabe on FaceTime and have him offer to text K-O and try and talk some sense into him. But they weren’t there, not anymore: All of late October’s shit had rent Athena’s social circle apart. 

Things had gotten rocky even before the final straw; Astra had been asking sideways sort of questions about Seth which had rankled Athena and threatened to offset some of their closeness, and Athena had started to get left with a sour taste in her mouth after some of Bryluen’s comments, too. One evening in early October Athena had been fretting over Seth and recounting the pressures of childhood with Astra as the night at the club wound down, and Bryluen had joined the conversation as a sympathetic ear, then accompanied Athena outside while she waited for her ride:

“It’s just awful your parents behaved how they did,” Bryluen said, frowning, her eyebrows knitted together with such concern it could almost have seemed theatrical. “I mean, if he’s a genius then no-one could compare—especially not if you have, what was it again? ‘Dyscalculia?’” Bryluen shook her head. “Really, what could they have been expecting? How unfair.”
“Yeah, I mean, it sucked,” Athena replied, shrugging; “I wanted my parents to love me. But I never really beat myself up for not being as smart as him… It’s kind of his whole shit, yanno? Like you said—no comparison.”
“Of course, and anyway—out on stage is where you shine; that’s clearly where you’re meant to be, not stifled by academia,” Bryluen simpered. “...Though your brother still often takes a rather literal spotlight there in concert, too, doesn’t he? Does that ever bother you?”
Athena furrowed her brow and glanced sideways at Bryluen. The concern in her voice had some strange undertone, something a little leading; as if there were an intended answer and it was the one that put Athena—in some way—in competition with her brother. Athena was uncomfortably reminded of her mom.
“No..?” she said, trying not to make assumptions about her friend’s intentions, but attempting to sound firm in her reply: “I’m the drummer, and anyway, he deserves it—”
“Of course he does!” Bryluen interrupted, blinking innocently. “He’s really worked so hard, it’s so clear, and he suffers so much because of it! It must be so upsetting for you that he shuts you out and won’t accept any help from you at all. You clearly love and trust him so much.”

The implications of Bryluen’s emphasis had rattled Athena, but her ride had gotten there before she could react. In the aftermath she’d tried to talk to Astra and Gabe about it, but both had insisted she’d misunderstood their friend and that Bryluen would never be so unkind as to cast aspersions on the depth of Seth’s love.
So...Athena had tried to let it roll off her back, and had second-guessed her own interpretations right along with them. Until that afternoon on the last Sunday of October, when Bryluen had let her true colors fly in Kohao’s face and he’d nearly put a bullet through his head. But Astra hadn’t said anything then, either: She’d left with Bryluen and had gotten distant and unresponsive. Just like Gabe. Just like all of Nightshrike. Sure, some of them had sent a handful of stilted, cold-toned texts—but in light of the fucking fiasco that had just happened, it was nothing. A couple weeks afterward Kohao had gone and yelled himself hoarse at Bry, and then that piecemeal withdrawal got replaced by what essentially amounted to stony silence.
Athena felt angry. Hurt. Fucking betrayed. But right now she desperately wanted her friends, wanted support, and it felt excruciatingly unfair that they were gone because she was on Kohao’s side and even he had screamed her out of the house. She felt the lump in her throat but scheduled a sobbing session for later, hailed a cab, and headed downtown: In search of a club playing music loud enough to drown out everything else in her shit-strewn life.

She couldn’t go to Eocene of course, so she found some unfamiliar venue that served their drinks too strong and couldn’t keep their strobes on beat but played music bass-y enough that Athena was pretty certain it could serve to restart a heartbeat, if necessary. At first she felt like the odd one out of the crowd, staying at ‘buzzed’ and not pitching herself towards wasted; dancing and not flailing drunk—but she managed to throw back enough of her cocktail to lose herself in the music and start an impromptu mosh-pit with a group of blatantly shitfaced deathrockers, who wolf-whistled like teenagers but also insisted on calling her ‘Chief.’
With them and the blaring music she stomped-and-moshed out her anger and energy, pretending that that was all there was to cope with...until the club started to clear out and she realized she needed to head back home. Standing out in the cold and flagging down a taxi, Athena was suddenly hit with the weight of everything all over again; Sethfire’s spiraling and her absent friends, Kohao’s unpredictability and the fact that she’d stormed off and left him alone at home, with Anarchy gone for work.

The fear was already starting to flood her as she clambered into the back of the cab, reciting her address on instinct and memory but disconnected from her own voice. Her ears had been left ringing by the nightclub’s music but now anxiety worked it into a fever-pitch tone. She tapped out an are-you-okay text to Kohao as her eyes went watery; what if he didn’t respond? What if she got home tonight to find a body? What if it wasn’t tonight, but the next, or a week from now, or what if it wasn’t Kohao, even, what if her brother was the first to go? 
She put her head in her hands and tried to reign herself in, but her shoulders shook with the stress that at any point her phone could ring with a call that someone she loved was dead or dying or missing all over again; that if any of that happened, she’d lost a third of her support system and couldn’t count on them for anything this time around: Not another search party, and definitely not a funeral. Her mind morbidly raced without her consent; thumbing through the flowers her loved ones were tattooed with, and the imagery her traitorous grey matter flashed through her mind’s eye wrenched her heart apart: Proteas and lilies in front of her brother’s headstone, a repugnant bouquet of Rocky Mountain columbines atop Kohao’s casket. 
Her phone chimed. Kohao had responded to her text with a ‘fucking fine. out smoking’ and a picture off the fire escape of his hand holding a lit cigarette, in front of a view of the night-time skyline’s constellation of city lights...framed so that at the picture’s bottom she could just barely glimpse fresh cuts on his wrist. She knew it wasn’t a cropping accident; she was meant to see. She burst into tears. 

A tissue appeared in front of her from the window in the cab’s plexiglass, and Athena gratefully took it, then another, as she tried and failed to contain her breakdown.
“Thank you, I’m sorry,” she tearfully choked to the cab driver as she blotted at her running eyeliner. ‘Waterproof’ my fucking ass, she thought.
“No need to be sorry. What’s going on, ma’am?” the taxi driver asked, her concerned eyes briefly meeting Athena’s through the rearview mirror. Athena struggled for a moment; tongue-tied by not wanting to be that person, bawling her sob story to some poor cabbie, but she was bottled up and was being asked and God, she needed to talk to someone.
“I’m so scared,” she said, strangled, trying not to sob and failing; “I’m so scared! It feels like I’m supposed to hold my life and my friends together right now but they’re falling apart and I’m—I’m not strong enough!” She crumpled an endless supply of tissues and poured everything out from there; being ‘the stable one’ but deprived of the people who used to stabilize her; the fact that her friend had nearly killed himself twice in less than a week and now sent her pictures of his self-mutilation; that she couldn’t get through to him half the time and he wasn’t even all of it, because there was Seth, too:
“—and I’m fucking terrified that my older brother is gonna manage to kill himself one of these days, he tried when he was seventeen and promised he’d never attempt again but now he drinks and he slit his own fucking throat like a week ago and won’t give me straight answers!” Athena sobbed, almost wailing but far too hoarse, and at first she thought her cabbie’s sharp intake of breath was going to result in an exasperated request for her to shut the fuck up, please, ma’am.
“I’m so sorry,” the taxi driver said instead, her voice heavy. “What’s your brother’s name?”
“S...Seth. Sethfire, but...Seth, to me. Seth.” Athena repeated his name fervently, almost a prayer, and the cabbie repeated it with equal respect, like she knew its value.
“‘Sethfire.’ ‘Seth...’” She paused. “...My brother’s name began with an S, too: Shadow. Our parents were hippie types; I’m Storm. What’s your name?”
“...Athena.” 

The cab was pulling into the apartment complex’s lot and Storm switched the meter off, but the conversation lingered in the air, waiting to be held.
“His name began with S?” Athena asked instead of opening her door. Her voice caught in her chest at the past tense. Storm turned around in her seat and Athena felt the kinship between them even before she spoke.
“Shadow hanged himself when I was younger,” she said. “Tell me about your brother.”
They talked too long and too easily and had too much in common for Fate to not be involved somewhere; Storm had even found Shadow’s body, an awful echo of what Athena had almost lived through in finding Seth. The empathy Storm offered was so thick as to almost be a tangible lifeline; something Athena could quite literally hold onto. Eventually Storm glanced at the clock and winced.
“I have to keep working tonight, but here, my number—” she said, reciting her information for Athena to save to her phone, and when Athena went to pay for her ride, Storm tried to wave off the money; saying another conversation sometime and the connection was payment enough. Athena promised to text or call—there was no way she wouldn’t—but tossed cash through the plexiglass window anyway, because if it wasn’t going to be for the ride, it was going to be for the therapy session.

It was less than a week later when, while paying rent online, Athena made note of the fact that there were apparently a couple one bedroom apartments available in the same building that Aetos had moved into. She ended up clicking over to their floorplans and photos with an unanticipated and guilty sense of yearning. 
She had made up with Kohao again, as always eventually happened after their fights: It’d been a quick turnaround this most recent time, though, maybe because of how haggard she’d looked coming home that night she met Storm. He’d apologized, as he always did, with the ‘sorry’s sandwiched between torrents of verbal self-abuse which she felt compelled to refute. 
Though he’d seemed calmer now that everyone had agreed to work on producing the EP he’d managed to churn out over his month of cocaine binges, he had been consistently unpredictable for long enough that these days she always felt like she was walking on eggshells no matter how stable he acted, and all in all daily existence with him had become an exhausting experience. Maybe it had been for a while, but the added stress of agonizing over both silence and sound from the ceiling overhead took its toll too, and so grew the appeal of a one-bedroom a parking lot away, with only unworrisome strangers overhead.

She thought about going for it and re-checked the listings, the rent. It was doable. Her guilt caught her up like a steel trap, though, painfully halting her in her tracks with the excruciating idea that moving out meant she was abandoning her brother; giving up on him the way he’d never given up on her. She fretted over her options, second-guessed herself half to death, and couldn’t stomach trying to raise the topic with any of her immediate social circle. Finally, desperate for an opinion as objective as possible, she dialed Storm’s number. 
Athena knew it was weird; they’d only met long enough to exchange names, numbers, and fractions of their trauma histories; asking for moving advice seemed out of left field...but it all was intertwined anyway and Athena needed someone who didn’t know her-know her yet; who didn’t know Seth or Kohao, who wasn’t involved. Someone separate from all the shit going on and tearing her apart.

“...You’re not abandoning your brother,” Storm said kindly through the phone after patiently listening to Athena sob out her guilty conscience and indecision over the course of an hour: 
“Listen to me, Athena, you love him, it’s fuckin’ obvious. But you’re falling apart right now and you can’t help him like that, either. Get yourself your own space. I’ll even come help you move.”
Storm’s assured tone and the experience she spoke from managed to break through for Athena, who took her words to heart. Her rental application was easily accepted, and though it made her uncomfortable to do, she ascertained that her move-in date was secure before finally telling Anarchy and Kohao that in a week’s time, she’d be moving out and heading over to the same building as Aetos.
Their blindsided expressions and bewilderment intensified her guilt, but she answered everything from “What, why?” to “Is it us?” to “What’s happening?” with a growing number of variations on “I just need my own space,” which left Kohao wounded and Anarchy concerned. He finally managed to talk to her alone one night and caught her hands in his, his eyes earnest beneath a brow furrowed by worry.
“Talk to me, ‘Thena,” he murmured gently. “I know something’s up; please tell me what it is. And what I can do.”
Her lip trembled for a heartbeat and she bit it, but he’d always kept up his offer to listen to her if she needed to talk, ever since making it all those years ago, and even if she could stifle her words she couldn’t stifle her trust in him—so she finally let herself crumple against his chest and break down in his arms, spilling out the truth of how wrenched apart she felt; how hard it was to live there but how guilty she felt over abandoning everyone. He went quiet for a few moments after she finished pouring her heart out, giving her the chance to regroup before he finally replied, soothing and genuine;
“Take care of yourself, ‘Thena. I’m here for K-O. And we’ll keep an eye on Sethfire...You’re not abandoning anyone.”
She choked up, immensely grateful for his broad chest and strong, solid arms, lending her the chance to finally let herself be the one in an embrace being offered protection. She leaned her forehead into the steady thump of his heartbeat and clutched his shirt in her hands.
“I’m not trying to leave you, either,” she said tearfully.
“I know. I’m the only one not causing problems,” he gently joked. “It’s okay, Athena. It’s across the parking lot, not the Hudson. It’s all fine. I’ll be right here.”

Despite all assurances, moving out proved an intensely emotional affair; the couch Storm helped her transport to her new apartment still had the names of now-absent friends painted on its cushions, and the guilt Athena felt over leaving Seth behind was almost all-consuming. Storm stuck around overnight to help her settle, welcome company to ward off Athena’s fear over her first night ‘away.’ 
“Like a ship,” Storm said that evening, gesturing to the apartment at large as she pulled a wine bottle out of her bag. “Only it’s a red, not champagne, and we won’t break it; stains. Might as well drink it instead, huh?”
They did, and Athena could have cried with the familiarity of it; she and Astra had done similar things—buzzed by both alcohol and adrenaline, crashing back at Astra’s apartment after a night spent clubbing, staying up to talk until their eyes refused to stay open.
Storm wasn’t Astra, though; younger in age but somehow older behind the eyes, and the conversations she and Athena shared, drinking wine and swapping histories and staying up too late, had a different kind of weight to them. The wisdom she had was the colder, bitter brand of wisdom that came with seeing too much too young, not the softer wisdom of learned experience, and her tone fluctuated with the topics they covered like she’d played too many roles in her life to settle on one, so now they cascaded over one another within her voice: A disaffected cabbie, an angry teenager, a devastated sister, a self-assured dominatrix, a compassionate suicide survivor.

The moon passed its zenith and both the late hour and the wine drew the lulls in conversation longer. During one such silence Athena found herself just studying her new friend: Storm seemed lost in thought: Her emerald eyes were ceiling-turned and distant but seemed to glow in the cool moonlight; she mindlessly swirled her last sip of wine around in her glass.
“...Tell me about Shadow,” Athena said suddenly, surprising even herself; “Did he have green eyes, like you?”
Storm smiled something soft and introspective and finally drained her glass.
“I like that question,” she said. “Nobody asks about his eyes, you know? Or about him as a person. They all ask what signs I missed...I was a kid. He did have green eyes. I think his were a little darker than mine, though.”
Like Seth’s, then, Athena thought to herself.
“What else are you wanting to know about him?” Storm prompted.
“...Everything? Just...What did he like to do? What were his passions? His fears? Did he even tell you about those? Did he ever go by ‘Shad’? I have a friend by that name, I...” Athena knew she was rambling but she felt suddenly desperate to understand this late young man, this dead brother, felt like if she could know Shadow, then maybe—just maybe—she could fight her way close enough to Seth to save him.

It ended up being a far more intimate night than intended; Athena felt closer to Storm than seemed reasonable for knowing one another so short a timespan and the attachment made her nervous—but when Storm had to leave for work in the morning, Athena couldn’t help but blurt out an invitation (or maybe it was more of a plea) for her to come back in the evening. And Storm, without so much as a raised eyebrow or batted eyelash, agreed to.
She kept her word and returned that evening with Chinese take-out in hand instead of wine:
“Figured we’d need dinner. Hope you like fried rice,” she said, unpacking the paper containers and settling in with all the easy familiarity of an old friend; “Thought this was the way to go since they include chopsticks and all, and we still need to get you more kitchenware.”

It was incredibly thoughtful and Athena wanted to seem anything but ungrateful, but her stomach seemed to have shrunk to nothing with the stress of evening and the tortuous thoughts plaguing her for the first time in years. She picked disconsolately at her rice, fighting tears until she couldn’t bear it anymore and ended up breaking down.
“Do you think if I stopped eating again Seth would care enough to save himself?” she asked despairingly, her voice going raw with how much she didn’t want to do that, but how few options she saw before her when it came to how she could save her brother.
“Oh, babe, no…” Storm said gently, coming to Athena’s side and taking her hands. “That’s not how to fix this. C’mon...let’s talk this through.”
Athena felt fifteen again, crying while someone coaxed her to eat, but Storm was patient and reassuring the whole evening through, guiding Athena away from seeing starvation and self-sacrifice as a viable route to take. They spent another night together, where Athena apologized for being so much to handle and Storm answered with an untroubled;
“You bottled your shit up too long and you need to lose it a little bit right now; that’s just how it is. I definitely don’t mind making sure you don’t nosedive in the process.”

Athena tried to take it in and pull herself back towards stability; Storm couldn’t live with her indefinitely, she needed to get her shit together. She limped back towards self-reliance as best she could despite continued breakdowns, struggling not to lean too heavily on anyone else or let on that her ED thoughts had made a reappearance: That would freak everybody out. She ached for company, though, and her impulsive trip to the pet store landed her with not the kitten she’d been thinking about, but a fat and impassive fireleg tarantula. Athena named her Beatrice, or Queen Bea, but the sounds of her pincers clicking through cricket exoskeletons proved to be less substantial than human warmth. It wasn’t long after adopting her that Athena found herself on the phone with Storm again, her tone casual and bright enough to cover up the fact that she’d just finished her third cry that week and her mascara had reached her chin.
“Hey, d’you wanna come over tomorrow night? You gotta see my new spider. I can grab some cheap wine, the three of us can have a girls night in.”
“Your new spider?”
“Her name is Beatrice and she’s big enough I gotta add her name to the lease. You down?”
“Yeah, ‘course. It’ll be good to see you, too.”

Something about Storm’s presence crumbled Athena’s walls like nothing else could: The introduction to Beatrice was rudely interrupted by the arrival of Athena’s fourth breakdown that week over whether or not she was making the right choice—because she hadn’t seen her brother in a couple days, now, and she wasn’t there and what if the distance was going to drive him to the edge? What if he up and killed himself and it was all her fault for moving away? What if she was doing everything wrong and God, how could anyone forgive her if she was?
Storm held her close and patiently redirected her tearful catastrophizing, speaking reason enough to bring Athena back to some fragile sense of stability.
“You’ve been bottling your shit up again, babe,” Storm said knowingly, pouring them both glasses of post-meltdown wine. “It gets worse when it’s stuck in there.”

The evening flowed more smoothly after that; there was palpable comfort to Storm’s presence and Athena gave, gratefully, into it. They drank enough to warm their bodies and let emotions deepen their roots as the night wore on, eventually sitting on the couch in their sleepwear, still talking; neither of them paying any attention to the show they’d put on.
“...I’m lonely, Storm,” Athena found herself confessing. She almost wanted to take it back as soon as she said it; yank herself away from the admission like a hand from a stove burner—but it was true, she was lonely, and though she felt like she had to hold it all together around everyone else, around Storm she let herself be honest: 
“I have people in my life but I have to be ‘the stable one’ around them. I can’t talk to my brother or my friends about anything anymore. I feel so alone.” Athena frowned. She didn’t want to cry again.
“I’m here,” Storm said gently.
“I feel lost, too.” Athena’s voice wavered and the concern in Storm’s expression deepened. She leaned forward, a couple stray strands of hair falling into her face, and cupped Athena’s shoulder.
 “You’re not, babe.” Storm was so close, so kind; her hand was warm and protective and Athena didn't know what made her say it but a whispered “...Kiss me?” left her mouth before she had a chance to think about it; breathed as a plea; as help me, as ‘find me.’ 

Storm blinked once, then twice, then leaned forward; their lips met in a gentle, stabilizing kiss which Athena couldn’t help but melt into. Storm’s palm rose to cup her cheek and Athena realized how long it had been since she’d felt truly close to someone; how long it had been since she’d let herself feel truly close to someone. So much of her energy got poured into her brother, her friends, her music. Her last relationship had come undone partially because of that; how much Athena prioritized everyone else in her life. She’d dismissed it when Wendy tried to talk to her about it then—God, almost two years ago—but she could see it now: How she stretched her resources too thin to allow herself to be in love, to pursue any relationships. How much of her life had been caught up in her ‘giving’ role in other people’s lives; her brother’s especially, but Kohao’s too. She found she’d ended up feeling given out and hollow, and Storm seemed nearly medicinal, now, exactly what she needed: Lips on hers; tender hands and someone else to warm her sheets and make her feel loved. Loved and seen and wanted instead of necessary.

It helped, in the end, and ended up a rather physical way to reach an epiphany...but hey, it worked. Athena realized how long she’d been running on empty and the degree to which she’d let other people shape her life...and she also realized she was not, under any circumstances, in an emotional position where she should impulsively start dating the woman who helped open her eyes.
“It’s not that I’m not, like, into you or anything,” Athena fumbled nervously, a couple days afterward; “But I need to deal with my shit before I can even think about anything long term, you know?”
“You’re not going to offend me, ‘Thena,” Storm said. Her eyes danced like she was trying incredibly hard not to laugh. “It was fun, babe, but yeah...If you asked me out it would be basically unethical of me to say yes. No offense, but you’re definitely, like, abstractly rebounding from your life situation right now—and rebound relationships? Always end badly.” She smiled. “So we’d better stick with being friends so I can keep helping you hold your shit together.”

They did stay friends; closer than before and with an intimate sense of trust that Athena treasured like nothing else. And Storm, as promised, stuck around to help her ‘keep her shit together,’ and even introduced her to one of her own friends, Hunter Murray, who turned out to be a future coworker and an easy friend; He had a smile and straightforward nature that both felt like breaths of fresh air; and he was affable and laid-back and wonderfully drama-free, despite being ex-military like Fawkes. Back home for Athena, gradually things did grow easier under a different roof. Her crying fits stopped; she didn’t feel compelled to call for company so often. Storm stayed at the top of her contacts, though, and Athena didn’t forget about Shadow or the things she’d learned about him; the things that that green-eyed brother had loved.

One day near Christmas found Athena with her own; standing beside Sethfire out on his balcony despite the cold in order to better see the sunset. She kept glancing at him rather than the sky, though; the scarring on his throat was visible now—the bandages long since removed—and though the scars kept drawing her eyes, they were so heart-wrenching it was hard for her to look at him for long without crying. He looked uncomfortable, standing rigid like he feared her passing judgement with her gaze. She could sense the distance between them and wanted, desperately, to bridge it. A crow flew by overhead, towards the reservoir, and sparked her memory.
“Hey...kinda random but...what do you think about bird-watching?” she asked quietly. Sethfire finally looked down at her, puzzled, and raised a tired eyebrow.
“I...don't think about bird-watching.”
“It might be fun...we could do it together,” she offered softly. She reached out for his hand and studied his knuckles instead of his expression.
“Sure, yes…I suppose we could count the pigeons.” There was a spark of dry warmth to his voice that made Athena look up—and there, struggling to surface from his dull eyes, was that old glint of humor he used to have; the faintest ghost of an amused smile on her brother’s lips. Athena wished she could reach out and grab it, hold it; keep that smile from slipping away again. 
“Perhaps we can find out where the ducks from the lagoon in Central Park go,” he continued softly. “I’m sure it’s frozen over by now.”
“I hated that book,” Athena murmured back, her own lips curling upward slightly at the reference. “You know I hated it, it was the assigned reading when I moved in with you. I bitched to you about it every evening.”
“I expect that is why I’ve found myself rather fond of it. It was wonderful to hear your voice so passionate again.”

God... Athena thought to herself as her smile grew watery, and now that’s what I’m dying to hear from you.